Page 3 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)
AUDREY
As if thinking about him made him appear, Merrick strode into the sacred grove. My attention, along with everyone else’s, jumped to him. Even with his ferocious power only partially released, it still crackled against my senses and thickened the air. It didn’t press against me, willing me to my knees like Sterling’s had, but that was only because he wasn’t trying to exert his will on us.
He reached the center of the grove and the group closed around him, ready to begin the ritual. Everyone about to meet the wolf-half of their soul was dressed in white, while everyone else was stripping out of their clothes since the nature of our magic that allowed us to shift completely destroyed whatever we wore.
For those of us about to be adults — please, oh please let me become an adult tonight — the destruction of our white clothing symbolized our transformation from child to adult. For everyone else, it was better on the bank account to strip first instead of constantly having to buy new clothing.
“It’s an auspicious night,” Merrick said, his voice a deep rumble as he turned his attention to the moon and I kept mine on him, determined not to see something I didn’t want to see — like Sterling naked. “Wolves that wake under the full moon are leaders in our community. Much will be expected of you.”
The eleven teens about to take their first transformation into adulthood drew closer, stepping into the circle of moonlight.
“You’re so sure your wolf won’t wake that you’re not going to join them?” Royce asked, suddenly right beside me, his voice low.
“My wolf can wake just fine over here,” I hissed back, fighting the urge to glance at him.
He’d played this game with me before. Two years ago, he’d come up beside me during the ritual and I’d gotten an eyeful of his honed physique and semi-hard cock. I was sure my eyes had bulged out of my head as my face had burned with embarrassment.
I knew it was stupid. Shifters were naked all the time.
Except our pack wasn’t naked all the time. We were essentially humans with aggressive tendencies until we were eighteen and because I had yet to shift, I hadn’t been involved in any of the hunts or games.
The only times I’d seen anyone naked was that one time I’d accidentally walked in on Sterling in the bathroom — and gotten my arm broken for my mistake — and the four other times I’d attended the transformation ceremony. But during the ceremony it had been night and hard to see much of anything unless someone had been standing right beside me, like Royce had… and now was.
“Audrey,” he murmured, his voice strangely soft, surprising me and straining my control to keep my attention on Merrick in the center of the grove. “Tonight’s your night. I can feel it.”
I huffed a bitter laugh despite my hope that my wolf would wake tonight. “Yeah, because I’m supposed to be a leader in our community?”
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
Because no one would listen to me. I was the girl who couldn’t shift, the girl who scrubbed floors like Cinderella and was about to have a prearranged mating like a woman from the Dark Ages. And no, there was no Prince Charming or fairy godmother who was going to give me a happily ever after. Happily ever after didn’t happen in real life.
Except the moment I thought that, I thought of Mila and her fated mate. She’d heard the power of a rare fated mating call with a shifter from another pack and had left town last year. We’d grown up together, her friendship never wavering even after Sterling, Joan, and their friends ramped up their bullying. She’d tried to resist the call, put off being with her mate, but it had made her miserable. I hadn’t wanted her to leave, but I also didn’t want to stand in the way of her happily ever after, so, after a lot of promising that I’d join her new pack the minute my wolf woke, she’d left.
She had a happily ever after. Maybe I had a fated mate as well. If I had one, Merrick couldn’t arrange my mating and my mate might be able to protect me from Sterling, or better yet, he’d be from a different pack like Mila’s mate.
Which was childish wishful thinking. A man wasn’t going to solve my problems and really, what kind of pathetic woman would I be if I hoped a man would whisk me off my feet and rescue me?
A tired, scared woman with very few options, a tiny voice said inside me.
But a fated mate just wasn’t in my cards. Just like my wolf awakening probably wasn’t either. And if I was going to be free of Sterling and his fan club, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.
I bit back a sigh and focused all my attention on Merrick and the others in the middle of the grove. Merrick pulled off his shirt, preparing to shift, and the group inched closer, drawn by his power.
I felt the tug as well, a tightening in my chest, but I stayed where I was. If I didn’t shift, I didn’t want a new, possibly out-of-control wolf to notice that I’d been bleeding and possibly still was.
He chanted the Ritual of Welcoming and Transformation and the pressure in my chest grew stronger. But this wasn’t a precursor to my wolf waking, just the alpha evoking the magic that would allow the wolf half of our soul to wake.
The pressure had happened the previous four solstices. The first time I’d thought I was really going to shift. The second time I was hopeful. Now I knew something else needed to happen. I just had no idea what.
Then searing agony exploded in my chest, stealing my breath and dropping me to my knees.
This was it. I was going to shift. My wolf was going to wake and I could get the hell out of this town.
But the pain was blinding, unlike anything I’d experienced before, and my sudden joy that I was finally going to be a real shifter snapped to panic.
This wasn’t how a shift was supposed to feel. Shifting was natural to our kind, our body turned to liquid and reformed in our animal form, as easy as breathing. It didn’t hurt and it certainly didn’t feel like I was being burned alive and ripped apart from the inside.
I clenched my jaw, fighting the agony, desperate to not draw attention to myself, especially in such a vulnerable position on my hands and knees. Sterling would use this weakness against me, probably use it as proof that I was never going to shift and Merrick needed to find me a mate before everyone in the other packs realized the truth. Although how he’d explain my complete lack of power to anyone looking at me and not mention that I couldn’t shift was beyond me.
“What do you know, she is a shifter?” Joan snickered.
“She isn’t if it hurts,” Sterling replied, pushing away from his father and striding toward me.
He grabbed my ponytail and yanked my head back as another explosion ripped through me, this one with a deafening gong that reverberated through my whole body.
“Let her go,” Royce snarled, grabbing Sterling’s wrist and twisting, breaking his hold on me.
“Fuck off,” Sterling shot back, his power flaring, crushing against me, demanding I bow down to him.
He reached for me again, but Royce shoved him before he could grab hold, and he stumbled back.
“Stay away from her,” Royce growled, kneeling beside me.
My gaze leaped up to his, shocked that he’d defend me against his best friend in public. There was no going back from that. Sterling would be pissed, and Royce had just lost his chance at being pack beta when Sterling took over from his father.
But then our eyes met and all my thoughts vanished, burned away by the power roaring and clanging inside me, and I was falling falling falling into his dark eyes.
They were bottomless and consuming and filled with power. He wasn’t as strong as Sterling, couldn’t command the same number of shifters to the same degree, but he still had the potential to crush me with a howl. And yet I knew he wouldn’t.
Because he was mine.
My mate.
His eyes widened and the fire swept back into my chest, leaving my limbs and face cold, but I was barely aware of it, of anything. We might not have known each other very well, but once we did, we’d be in love forever. That was how fated mating bonds worked. They were precious and rare, a strange side effect of the spell that had taken away our ability to shift until we were eighteen, and those with fated mate bonds were revered among the pack.
I did have a happily ever after.
And Royce had a high enough status in the pack that even if Sterling chose someone else to be his primary beta when he took over, I’d still be safe from their torments. Sterling would lose face if he continued to pick on me. I was no longer the girl who killed her mother just by being born, or whose father had killed himself, or who couldn’t shift.
I was now the girl with a fated mate.